Well, since you are in python already, you shouldn't have to subprocess very often. Then you would rather do os.listdir() instead of subprocess.check_output(["l

Well, since you are in python already, you shouldn't have to subprocess very often. Then you would rather do os.listdir() instead of subprocess.check_output(["ls"]). For the other cases where you do need subprocess, the more sane escaping rules (compared to shell) almost makes the verbosity worth it.